


Order Ahead from Our Mobile App

by plutosrose



Series: Proudly Serving [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, M/M, Matchmaking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28778598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutosrose/pseuds/plutosrose
Summary: Pepper cleared her throat and shoved a budget underneath his nose. “Can you explain to me why we’re paying the barista $100,000 a year?”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Proudly Serving [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1999117
Comments: 18
Kudos: 205





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Tony was halfway through what was an extremely important meeting with Sam about skywriting “Happy Birthday Rhodey” over Manhattan when Pepper burst into his office, carrying a stack of what he could only assume was something boring like budgets. Snore.

“You told me that this meeting was about a potential Hydra cell operating outside of Brooklyn,” Sam said, glancing over at Pepper. Tony shrugged. 

“Minor detail, really.”

“Sounds like a big detail to me,” Sam grumbled underneath his breath. 

Pepper cleared her throat and shoved a budget underneath his nose. “Can you explain to me why we’re paying the barista $100,000 a year?”

Sam made a sound that sounded halfway between a gasp and a groan. 

Tony leaned back in his chair and considered his options. “Well, as you can see, I’m taking the initiative to pay people what they’re actually worth. I’m setting an important trend for other billionaires to pay the people that work for them a living wage.”

Sam was glaring so intently at him that Tony idly wondered if he might have had laser vision and just never told anyone. He’d have to ask him if he could test that sometime. “Yeah, that would be fine if the dude actually would do his job.”

Pepper gave him an even more disapproving look, the kind that usually made him fold in on himself almost instantly. “Listen, I am compensating him with a salary that is commensurate to his experience,” which made Sam promptly snort. 

“Is that your way of saying he’s here so that Steve can get laid?” Sam asked. 

Pepper’s look of disapproval suddenly turned almost indignant, which made Tony desperately try to avoid eye contact, because that was where she got the source of her power. “You hired someone to have sex with Steve?”

“Hey,” Tony said, a little sharply, because now he was the one who got to be indignant. He’d only found Barnes out of the goodness of his heart. “I did not hire someone to come and have sex with Steve. If you want to be really technical about it, I hired someone to be in the same building at the same time as Steve. Honestly, I’m just as surprised as either of you that it worked, though I guess it does speak to my innate genius and ability to dissect the human condition--FRIDAY, please get me a consulting gig on the next season of The Bachelor, will you?”

A voice came from the ceiling that for once, wasn’t Clint. “Right away, sir. I will email your contact information to the producers immediately.” 

“Thank you, FRIDAY.” 

Pepper rolled her eyes. “He has to do work for the company, especially if you’re paying him that much.”

“He is doing a lot of work for the company,” Tony countered, which prompted Sam to hold up his ID badge that said ‘Wamuel Silson’ for Pepper to see. She furrowed her brow. “He’s printing ID badges, he’s making coffee, he’s making sure that Steve is less annoying...frankly he’s undercompensated, in my opinion.” 

“He’s barely doing any of those things,” Sam pointed out, which prompted Tony to pull out the big guns.

“Because of him, Steve hasn’t caused a meeting to run over in literal months. I can be home at a reasonable hour every night. Remember, we said no more long hours?”

Pepper raised an eyebrow, and that was about the moment that he remembered that she was immune to any bullshit that he threw her way. “You can’t pay him this much. We have people on the engineering staff who we don’t even pay this much.”

“So, give them a raise. It’s not like I’m running out of money, right? I’m...not running out of money, right?” 

“No, you’re not running out of money,” Pepper sighed.

Tony shrugged. “Then I don’t see what the problem is. Everyone’s happy. The real problem that I’m having is that for some reason the city doesn’t want any Avengers in the air doing skywriting. Something about ‘inciting a panic.’”

“Yeah,” Sam deadpanned. “That’s the real problem.” 

Pepper sighed again. 

-

Later that afternoon, Darcy stopped by for a visit. Well, she didn’t so much stop by a visit as she did come by to drop off some of Dr. Foster’s notes on off-world, alien technology as part of her job, and get into a very long, involved, and possibly antagonistic conversation with Bucky and Sam. Not that the antagonistic part was her fault, but Tony considered it his duty to help anyone in need. 

Holding a carton of chow mein from one of his favorite restaurants in Manhattan, Tony hopped up onto the concierge desk and started slurping down his noodles. 

Whatever the conversation was before, it quickly changed gears when he sat on the concierge desk. Thank God too, he’d already spent all of his brainpower for the day on breaking up fights on settling a dispute in the engineering department. 

“I’m seeing this new guy, his name is Jason and he’s a bio-med major. Want to see a picture?” Darcy held out her phone to show the three of them a picture of Jason, and Tony’s nose immediately wrinkled at the sight of him. There were bad vibes. Bad vibes only.

And he should know, he was an innate genius and a master of dissecting the human condition. Steve and Barnes were all the proof that he needed to know that was true. 

Tony made a face. “I just don’t get a good feeling when you talk about this guy, you know? I think you should break up with this guy immediately,” he said in between noodle slurps. 

“How do you know that?” Darcy asked, raising an eyebrow. “I barely told you anything about him, just that he’s a bio-med major and that his name is Jason.”

“Yeah, it’s just in here,” Tony slurped down more noodles and shivered. “Je ne sais not good. Fatal attraction. Creepy note guy from Love, Actually. Unless you want his bad romance, I’d break up with him now.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Clint, who had appeared from somewhere, Tony didn’t know where, nor did he want to know, said, “Are you sure?”

“Completely sure.”

“Dump him immediately,” Clint nodded. 

“Okay, but there’s no way that you could know anything about romance,” Darcy shot back, “No offense.” 

“Tony has a sixth sense about these kinds of things,” Barnes said, nodding seriously. “He has like a built-in soulmate radar or something. If he’s saying that this guy isn’t the one, then you need to break it off immediately.”

Of course, Steve, who he should have known by now was never more than a few feet away from Barnes, was smiling like a complete dummy in Bucky’s direction, and Tony felt a surge of pride, because yeah, he did have a goddamn soulmate radar, and he would find a way to bottle and patent that technology if it killed him.

“Do you mean it?”

“Of course I do,” Bucky smiled, leaning back in the concierge chair and reaching out to hold Steve’s hand.

“Right,” Sam murmured under his breath. “Soulmates. Barnes is a demon sent here specifically to distract Steve. If a villain appeared tomorrow and attacked Avengers Tower, Steve wouldn’t even notice as long as Barnes was smiling in Steve’s general direction...like ponytail princess will kill us all if he hasn’t already by slowly poisoning the coffee that’s sold here.”

“Did you say something, Wamuel?” Bucky grinned, and Sam narrowed his eyes at him. 

“I hate you.”

Bucky blew a kiss in his direction, and Steve was just so fucking smile-y that it was almost nauseating.

Man, he really was a fucking genius.

“Well,” Tony looked between Barnes and Steve and decided an intervention was probably needed before they made out in the lobby, “Back to work, everyone.” 

“Tony, the only one of us who works for you is Barnes, and he’s not even working,” Sam pointed out. “He was playing GTA Online on the computer here.” 

“Diamond Casino Heist?” Tony asked, and Bucky nodded. 

“Want to see me beat it?”

“No...yes,” Tony said, as Barnes turned the computer back on and started the game. Steve leaned in and pressed a kiss against Bucky’s hair and rested his head on his shoulder, body draped over the back of the chair. 

“I’m going to travel back in time and talk to my nine-year-old self and tell him becoming a superhero is a huge mistake,” Sam murmured, shaking his head. 

“You gonna watch too, Wamuel?”

Sam grumbled. “Fine. Just this once. But for the record, I object to this whole thing.”

“Objection noted and forwarded to the CEO,” Tony said as he craned his neck to get a better view of the screen. 

Sam sighed.


End file.
